Never Forgotten
by sweetlemongrass
Summary: Once you've given your heart to someone, it's their's to keep. Forever. RG/JC.  P.S. I did not use names. Enjoy!


Gravestones lined the cemetery like stoic soldiers in march formation, saluting whoever had enough bravery to walk their hallowed ranks. Their inscribed faces were full of cold and dew that sheened in the moonlight like a frightened child's small round eyes. If only they knew that true darkness didn't only exist in the night. If only they knew that innocence had lost it's heart. Her heart.

_Bloody perfect..._

A perfect night for midnight walks through the cemetery complete with the ominous feeling of nightmares coming to life. Especially in this cemetery. He knew being alone was dangerous in this town. But he didn't want anyone to see this; this was private.

He blew streams of ghostly fog onto the cemetery air; consecrating it. There was no holier place for him. No place gave him this feeling in his chest like this place did. It was as if he was frozen in time with only one memory left in his mind. One of stillness, disbelief and disillusion with the whole act of living. Nothing was ever going to bring her back from the stone tablet thrust into the cold earth. With only a name inscribed to remember her warm touch by. Cool granite that frosted and obscured the face of her new existence was the only semblance left of her self.

He didn't inhale after all the air had left his lungs. The paralysis of grief refused to let them breathe in. But the burn wasn't any different from the captive energy backing up in his veins. It was just spreading throughout all of him. So he left precious seconds pass by, finding no real relief in abstaining from the constant reminder of his dependencies. He already knew he was completely dependent on her. And she was in the air.

God, it had been over a decade. Two years more than a decade. Just twelve miserable years. And three days and, he checked his watch, twelve minutes.

He turned his head in disgust.

_God, this shouldn't be so bloody hard._

But it was. His fist squelched around a single stem as the veins in his head began to throb. The pain in his head was replaced by sharp pangs in his hand. A single, solitary red rose he squeezed riddled his hands with passive thorns. Hands he couldn't care about any longer. Care with either. They weren't even able to save her. They just threw fire like an angry child would, unable to hold anything solid. Anything real. Not anymore.

Tears burned his eyes. They fogged his vision more and more until everything was coated in surreal fog. Fog like the one in his mind. But the tears never fell. If they never fell, they weren't real. They'd just go back into his eye and dissolve back into nothingness. Like they should.

He checked his watch again.

_Fifteen minutes... Damn. _

Why was this so hard? It'd been twelve miserable, wonderful, painful, joyful years. So much had changed and even more had stayed the same. Worlds had been transformed. Futures and people had been forever altered. So why did it always come back to this?

Back to her...

The cemetery angels' eyes were so pale, so white, so set in stone. They did not falter when rain fell from their tired gazes. They did not warm with the bright sun. They did not close when night set in. They just lay there, watching the world pass them by. She was an angel. Were her eyes so cold?

The man looked towards the sky once more, just for old times sake. The last time he'd actually taken time to watch the sky sparkle was... wouldn't you know it, twelve years, three days and, the relentless hands kept quivering towards forever, seventeen minutes ago.

**Pat, Pat, Pitter...**

He looked down. Blood droplets were starting to accumulate on the overgrown grass. Deep red. Just like her. Passion that burned so hot, she burned down. He looked at his palm. The rose was embedded in his palm. The spines had dug themselves into him and refused to let go.

Just like her...

Or was it the other way around? It didn't matter anymore. Nothing really did. Not since that horrid night he'd looked so forward to. Until he reached the top of those damned stairs. Until he'd felt them cave while the vision in front of his eyes stayed in place. Without taking him with. He stared, watching... nothing. There was nothing there anymore. But there was everything behind her eyes. There was the future, smashed. There was the past, dead. And there was love; frozen and forever.

_Forever..._

Tensing, he tore the rose hastily out of his palm. Only the rose. There was no hope of even trying to pull her out. She'd stolen his heart. Like any demon who tried but she did it so gently he'd never even noticed it was gone. Like she truly treasured it. All that mattered was that she was keeping it safe, holding onto it until the day they'd see each other again. That wonderful day when he'd enter this cemetery and stay with her forever.

The thought brought a small hope of a smile to his eyes. All the smiles since her were just masks to hide behind. Rocks to crawl under. Made everyone think that this wasn't still haunting him. That this rose was for someone else. But it was always just for her.

_No use in letting it die there._

He studied the soiled rose lying there in his torn hand. Its strong stem holding the weight of such a majestic flower; bearing its bloom high and with absolute pride. Its delicate red petals desperately holding its shape against all odds. Those petals that had finally started to wilt in the darkness. Starved of light, torn away from everything it'd ever known to end up here. Futility sucking the life out of the already dead.

_Like a bloody vampire._

Like the vampire who took away their whole world and broke it down into little bits of cement crumbling in the rain. Because when he took her away, he took everything from him as well. There was life in his body, but none in his heart. He was lost and alone without her. Nothing ever made that fact easier to grasp. He glanced down at his watch, nervous that he'd missed something. Something that she might have been telling him all along.

Any sign she could have given him was never too small.

Like a sweet summer breeze that flooded his modest home, filling it with her gentle warmth. With her it felt right.

Or a ray of sunshine floating across the flowing prairie. Like she was telling him that there would always be brightness in the dark.

_There's no light here. No life._

There were only solitary stone and brick memorials to the dead. A crumbling garden atop lifeless corpses rotting in the eternal darkness. Death saturated the still night air. Emptiness permeated the quiet beauty of the night.

Emptiness hid by a cold demeanor and a glass of scotch seeped through the facade he'd worn so long, forcing itself to the surface from the turbulent depths in his mind. The vacuum in his ears that was filled and consumed by her bright, sarcastic laughter. The cold on his lips that were never truly warmed by anyone else. The broken spaces between his fingers he used to hold her hand, wishing the day to drag on forever.

It was so loud his stomach retched.

She was his all. His other half. Now, she was laid here, in darkness, perpetually waiting for him.

He glanced down at his watch.

_Forty-eight minutes. _

The second hand nervously twitched along its set pattern. Forever returning to the same god damned point.

Forever was a long time, but not long enough. It dragged on endlessly but stopped so abruptly that it slammed him into the walls of his own reality, smashing every molecule in his body. As he held her face for the last time, watching the future play out across her stilled eyes, he remembered crying. Not with tears or even with sound. But with every fiber of his being pulling apart and letting the meaningless of his new life enter in. It ate at his breast and paralyzed his limbs. Death kissed his eyes and ran a soft hand down his spine, marking him for the curse of a life without her.

He was so tired of trying to forget what she made him feel; what those unspilled tears tasted like. Slowly, his hollow eyes silently fell closed. He felt the burn flood across those weary lids. He noticed the pressure in his throat build. The loneliness was resurrected. Finally letting the night touch him once again, he surrendered.

And he cried.

Those meaningless days. The ones somehow consumed by apocalypses he so fervently wished to be the last. Whichever side came out to be the victor. But they had always won. No matter how powerful the opponent, how dangerous the magic, how dark the evil...

Never had they lost. Yet, somehow, they were always defeated.

Struck down not only by steel or by wood, but also by terror, deceit, hatred and carnage; they were always defeated. The tears that burned down his face were only a testament to the scars all of them hid on the inside. Not wanting anyone to touch their still aching wounds of the not-so-distant past, they bound themselves up in tightly strung cocoons that trapped them, rotting themselves in their own turmoil. They were drowning in their own pain, splashing the flooding remains on each other when ever a fist was thrown, a kick met its mark or a stake was thrust.

Now, he was alone to let the bitter truth of love stolen and loneliness lived envelop him in its cold caress. Hopefully she'd hear. Hopefully she'd tear back all the layers of brokenness, leaving him bare, and hold him. Like she used to when she herself wasn't enveloped in death's numbing hold. When he didn't wish to take death by the hand and lead himself to whatever lie beyond vampires and the demons of old.

And inside, he felt the fire burn. The depths of untold hell dimensions welled up within his heart, burning the night into crimson carnage. Setting it ablaze, illuminated by the source of all his suffering. Black was turned into violent red. And blood ran.

His, hers, the demon's, who stole everything, turned rivers into thick canals of raging flood.

And he screamed.

Wailing, he beat the ground with all his might. Letting all the hurt escape. Feeling just a simple taste of serenity on his tongue. Remembering all the good days they shared before the night set in. He let his voice go hoarse, his fists bleed and his eyes dry up completely. Just for another scrap of her memory. Just another glimpse of how good life could have been. How wonderful her love made him feel.

Just to feel one last time.

Then there was quiet. He picked himself up from the clammy ground and delicately picked up the rose meant only for her. He cradled in his hands as if it were glass. As if it would shatter as easily as their lives had. He didn't even need to watch where his steps took him, they would find the way. They would always know the way back to her.

Still, his eyes remained fixated on the rose. Its stem was bent, but not broken. Its thorns were smashed, but still sharp. Its petals were, somehow, perfectly pristine. Red seeped into them and echoed back tenfold. As if they were strengthened by all it had been through. Just like his own love for her.

No matter what would come to him and this earth. They would transcend pain, brokenness, hate, anger, violence and even death itself.

They were eternal.

Finally, his feet came to a stop. Ahead of him lie a stone. A stone within a garden of stones. But only this stone, this rock, mattered. It was for her. It was the last real reminder of who she used to be.

He laid the rose on the stone. Treating it like an alter and his sacrifice was this single rose. It was all he could give. He had already given her his everything.

He traced along the cold granite with his finger tip. Ingraining the carved lines forever into his memory. Burning them on his finger tip. Staring, he made sure to remember every last detail. Because he not only felt her warmth under his hand, he could smell her in cool night air. He could taste her on his tongue if the wind grazed upon it and he saw her face every time he closed his eyes.

A small smile, a genuine grin, blossomed on his face. She was everywhere and was truly with him.

A gentle whisper in the wind made him open his eyes.

The gray of morning was creeping up the sky. Dawn was coming. The night was almost over. Another day was about to begin.

"I love you, Jenny..." Giles whispered to the rising sun.

The wind ghosted into his ear.

"Yeah, I know."

Giles just chuckled and gazed ahead into a future she would always be a part of.


End file.
